The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday to allow a lower court to review and potentially overturn an immigration judge’s determination to deport an illegal immigrant, with possible implications for the removal of criminal aliens.
The immigration judge had denied an illegal immigrant’s request to avoid deportation and remain in the United States based on one of four statutory criteria for relief from deportation, namely that of an “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” to the child of the would-be deportee.
Mr. Wilkinson was arrested and detained by U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE), and slated for deportation. However, he applied for relief from deportation, arguing that his 7-year-old son, who has a serious medical condition and depends on him for financial and emotional support, would suffer “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship.”
Congress has granted immigration judges discretionary power to cancel deportation proceedings against an illegal immigrant and permit the noncitizen to remain in the country lawfully.
The immigration judge found that Mr. Wilkinson’s situation did not meet the statutory hardship standard and denied relief, with the Board of Immigration Appeals affirming that denial.
Upon appeal, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals held that it lacked the jurisdiction to review the immigration judge’s discretionary hardship determination.
The case ended up before the Supreme Court, which on March 19 held that the determination was a “mixed question of law and fact” and so is reviewable by a court.
Justices for the majority held the view that the criteria for granting relief from deportation are not merely or overwhelmingly questions of fact (which would make them less reviewable by courts) but also of law.
‘Questions of Law’
The U.S. Attorney General has been granted discretionary power, under the Immigration and Nationality Act, to cancel the deportation of non-permanent residents who satisfy four eligibility criteria.One of these criteria is “that removal would result in exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” to the applicant’s immediate family member, such as a spouse or dependent child, who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident of the United States.
“In this case, the application of the hardship standard—which requires an IJ [immigration judge] to evaluate a number of factors in determining whether any hardship to a U. S. citizen or permanent-resident family member is substantially different from what would normally be expected in the removal of a close family member—concededly requires a close examination of the facts,” she wrote.
Justice Sotomayor wrote for the majority that the Supreme Court disagreed with the government’s argument that evaluating the statutory criteria for cancellation of an illegal immigrant’s removal proceedings was a “primarily factual mixed question is a question of fact” and that nothing in the law supports the government’s view that “the phrase ‘questions of law’ is so limited.”
‘Defies Common Sense’
Justice Samuel Alito wrote in a dissent that Congress passed laws that sought to control illegal immigration and streamline procedures for removing illegal aliens from the country who had been convicted of criminal offenses.He and the other dissenting justices argued that when Congress granted courts the jurisdiction to review cancellation-of-removal determinations when “questions of law” arose, they didn’t mean to adopt a “maximalist understanding of ‘questions of law’ that could unreasonably delay the conclusion of removal proceedings for illegal immigrants.